At Times They Call To One Another In A Harsh, Aspirate
Tongue, And Then Go Off At A Run, Noiselessly, Barefooted, With
Burnous Flying, Like Moths In The Night.
They lie in wait for the
parties of tourists who arrive from time to time.
For the great
symbols, during the hundreds and thousands of years that have elapsed
since men ceased to venerate them, have nevertheless scarcely ever
been alone, especially on nights with a full moon. Men of all races,
of all times, have come to wander round them, vaguely attracted by
their immensity and mystery. In the days of the Romans they had
already become symbols of a lost significance, legacies of a fabulous
antiquity, but people came curiously to contemplate them, and tourists
in toga and in peplus carved their names on the granite of their bases
for the sake of remembrance.
The tourists who have come to-night, and upon whom have pounced the
black-cloaked Bedouin guides, wear cap and ulster or furred greatcoat;
their intrusion here seems almost an offence; but, alas, such visitors
become more numerous in each succeeding year. The great town hard by -
which sweats gold now that men have started to buy from it its dignity
and its soul - is become a place of rendezvous and holiday for the
idlers and upstarts of the whole world. The modern spirit encompasses
the old desert of the Sphinx on every side. It is true that up to the
present no one has dared to profane it by building in the immediate
neighbourhood of the great statue.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 4 of 206
Words from 798 to 1061
of 55391
